The time series at the Strait of Gibraltar as a baseline for long-term assessment of vulnerability of calcifiers to ocean acidification

12 pages, 6 tables, 4 figures.-- This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY)The assessment of the saturation state (Ω) for calcium carbonate minerals (aragonite and calcite) in the ocean is important to determine if calcifying organisms have favourable or unfavourable conditions to synthesize their carbonated structures. This parameter is largely affected by ocean acidification, as the decline in seawater pH causes a decrease in carbonate ion concentration, which in turn, lowers Ω. This work examines temporal trends of seawater pH, ΩAragonite and ΩCalcite in major Atlantic and Mediterranean water masses that exchange in the Strait of Gibraltar: North Atlantic Central Water (NACW), Levantine Intermediate Water (LIW) and Western Mediterranean Deep Water (WMDW) using accurate measurements of carbonate system parameters collected in the area from 2005-2021. Our analysis evidences a gradual reduction in pH in the three water mases during the monitoring period, which is accompanied by a decline in Ω for both minerals. The highest and lowest decreasing trends were found in the NACW and LIW, respectively. Projected long-term changes of Ω for future increases in atmospheric CO2 under the IPCC AR6 Shared Socio-economic Pathway "fossil-fuel-rich development" (SSP5-8.5) indicate that critical conditions for calcifiers with respect to aragonite availability will be reached in the entire water column of the region before the end of the current century, with a corrosive environment (undersaturation of carbonate) expected after 2100This work was supported by the European projects CARBOOCEAN (FP6-511176), CARBOCHANGE (FP7-264879), PERSEUS (FP7-287600), Eurosea and COMFORT. The EuroSea (Improving and integrating the European Ocean Observing and Forecasting System) and COMFORT (Our common future ocean in the Earth system - quantifying coupled cycles of carbon, oxygen, and nutrients for determining and achieving safe operating spaces with respect to tipping points) projects have received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreements No 862626 and 820989, respectively. Funding from the Junta de Andalucia through the TECADE grant (PY20_00293) is also acknowledged. SA-V was supported by a pre-doctoral grant FPU19/04338 from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. FP was supported by the BOCATS2 (PID2019-104279GB-C21) project funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. This work is a contribution to the CSIC Interdisciplinary Thematic Platform OCEANS+, funded by the European Union-Next Generation EU Agreement between MITECO, CSIC, AZTI, SOCIB, and the universities of Vigo and Cadiz, to promote research and generate scientific knowledge in the field of marine sustainability. SF acknowledges the financial support of a “Vicenç Munt Estabilitat” postdoctoral contract from the Balearic Islands Government and the PTA2018–015585-I funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and InnovationPeer reviewe